Television psychics attempt to crack a 28-year-old murder case, which has left Garden Grove police investigators baffled
By DEEPA BHARATH
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
GARDEN GROVE ? It was a grisly killing that jolted a quiet family neighborhood 28 years ago.
On a rainy Tuesday morning in November, a 10-year-old boy walked through the bloodied door of his house to find his mother, Patricia Ann Neufeld, bludgeoned to death in a bedroom.
The case, which Garden Grove police officers at the time called the most gruesome killing they had come across, remains unsolved.
Enter Laurie Campbell and Pam Coronado.
The duo doesn't comb crime scenes for blood, hair or DNA samples. Campbell and Coronado, who say they are psychics, are trying to resuscitate cold cases through a new Discovery Channel series called "Sensing Murder."
The episode featuring the Neufeld case airs at 10 tonight.
Producers approached the Garden Grove Police Department earlier this year with the idea for the show, said Investigator Elaine Jordan, a 25-year veteran at the department.
"I didn't know what to expect," she said.
Sure, other investigators gave her a hard time about it, Jordan said.
"But if doing the show meant more attention to the case, it's worth it," she said. "If someone ? anyone ? comes forward with information, it's worth it."
Producers taped the show in April with Campbell, Coronado, Jordan and retired police detective Wallace Talbott, who worked on the case in 1978.
Campbell, an Irvine mother of two, says the victims always lead her.
"The dead know when we're coming," she said. "And they are always ready to show us the way."
Coronado, who lives in Ventura County and has been working with police departments for 10 years, called the Neufeld killing one of the most unsettling cases she has ever worked on.
"It was really disturbing to me ? just the brutality of it," said Coronado, who also worked on the Washington, D.C., sniper case.
Neufeld, 34, was baby-sitting two infants in the Richmond Avenue house when her assailant struck. Campbell was able to say it was a baby boy and girl, Jordan said.
"She also said there was a 'k' connection to the case," the investigator said. "The victim was found by her son, Kirk."
So did Campbell and Coronado actually help crack the case?
They say yes. The detective says "not really."
Campbell said she and Coronado pointed in the direction of a serial killer. But Jordan says Garden Grove police investigators had already questioned Gerald Parker, known as the "bedroom basher" from the 1970s, who bludgeoned women to death and then raped their bodies.
Parker was convicted and sentenced to death in 1999, but only after Kevin Green had mistakenly served 16 years in prison for the killings, which were later proved by DNA evidence.
"We've interviewed Parker thrice about the Neufeld case even before the psychics got involved," Jordan said. "And all three times he's denied it."
Also, Neufeld was not raped, she said.
But that doesn't rule out other serial killers, Campbell says.
"Our job here was to breathe some fresh insight into the case," she said. "It's up to the police to follow the leads and solve the case."
Jordan said Coronado believed the killer had marked Neufeld as a victim at a grocery store and then followed her home for the kill.
Campbell said she had a vision of Neufeld on her knees, begging for her life.
"She knew what was coming," Campbell said. "She knew she wasn't getting out of this alive."
The experience can "freak out" the most seasoned psychics and move them to tears, Campbell said.
"I had nightmares about this one case we're working on where the killer tortured his victim with knives," she said.
But Jordan said the women's observations don't mean much.
"Maybe I expected too much," she said. "Maybe I thought there would be this huge revelation during our time together. I was waiting for it to happen. And it just didn't."
Terri Integlia, who now owns and lives in the house where Neufeld died, says she and her sister, who lives across the street, believe they've seen the dead woman's apparition.
"Stuff always gets moved around the house," Integlia said. "I feel this energy in the house that is very chaotic. I've never felt it's evil, but just tiresome and sometimes sad."
http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/ho ... 310398.php
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